"Devils Ball" is a song by Swiss duo Double, released as the lead single from their second studio album Dou3le. The single was released in 1987, and featured a guest appearance from Herb Alpert, who played trumpet on the track.

Following the band's breakthrough success with their 1985 album Blue, and the hit single "The Captain of Her Heart", the band began work on a follow-up album, which was released as Dou3le in 1987. The leading single selected from the album was "Devils Ball", which gained acclaim, however only reached #71 in the UK, lasting within the Top 100 for four weeks. It also reached #30 in Belgium. The Dou3le album failed to emulate the success of its predecessor, while a second single "Gliding" was not a success either.

In a 2011 interview for i:Vibes, Maloo expressed his thoughts on the single, and the process of recording it: "Doub3le is not my favourite album. The album isn't homogeneous. Everybody was doing his own thing and we were about to split up over the recording process. Our single "Devils Ball" was a big accident. It wasn't a hit, because the guy that played the electric violin couldn't play the theme on the acoustic violin. I wanted an acoustic violin, but in the end we went with the electric violin and a free interpretation of the lead theme. I didn't want this and I knew it wasn't good for the song, so I asked Herb Alpert who owned A&M Records to play the main melody on the trumpet, but in the end the violin survived along with the trumpet. The label wasn't happy, because we had [already] had a hit, but radio stations didn't play it, because it was too experimental sounding. It was a minor hit in England though."

In 2011 Maloo recalled Alpert's appearance on the track: "I heard his music at a very young age and it wasn't until way later that I found out it was him. His music was a big part of my childhood. With the success of Double, we were able to meet him at the former Charlie Chaplin studios in Los Angeles. When we were mixing our second album we asked him to play the piano part on "Devils Ball" on the trumpet and he immediately agreed. 10 years later I saw him at his concert again in Hamburg. He insisted that "Devils Ball" should have been a big hit and that it's a shame it wasn't. He obviously hates to lose."

In a 2013 interview with the Kickin' it Old School blog, Maloo explained his reaction to the duo's inability to gain further hit singles, other than "The Captain of Her Heart": "It was more surprising rather than frustrating at the time. We had minor hits with "Woman Of The World" and "Devils Ball", but they couldn't compete with The Captain's popularity at all. We were proud of other songs we had created, but it's like when the sun is shining you don't see the beautiful stars, although they're there all the time."

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Wikipedia